Archive | February, 2008

It turns out that I’m not the only one who’s perplexed at Iraqi Airways, or whoever controls their money, talking about buying 40 Boeing aircraft. The indefatigable ladies and gentlemen of London law firm Howard Kennedy, who represent Kuwait Airways (remember them), are deeply unamused. You can see their point of view.

I should ‘fess up at this point and say I don’t know – which is pretty useless for an aviation blogger I suppose. But I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t know. Possibly including Bombardier. Anyway, they’re confident enough to give authorisation to their sales team to offer the aircraft in the market. […]

…expensive though, I come with the rest of Reed Elsevier’s print and electronic business products. Together it’s all known as Reed Business Information and you’ll need awfully deep pockets to become the proud new owner. Feel free to drop me a line (with many zeroes in it). Having written about the sales of more companies […]

Quite a week. For whatever reason BALPA did not yet release the results of the British Airways pilots strike ballot regarding the creation of OpenSkies which was due to close today. Presumably it will all come out on Thursday. BALPA has made clear that it is very confident of getting the strike mandate. (As I […]

The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has today issued an update on its investigation of the crash of the British Airways Boeing 777 at Heathrow last month. It appears to rule out several of the most-discussed possible causes, and does not strongly point to any particular cause. It mentions a couple of further lines […]

Thomas M Ryan Jr was commander in chief of USAF Military Airlift Command in the early 1980s, so he clearly knows more than me about operating tankers, but I think even Boeing may want to distance themselves from this St Louis Post-Dispatch article he wrote supporting the KC-767. Ryan, who was later VP government programs […]

It’s all a little vague in fairness but the Iraqi transport ministry really does seem to be in the process of being inveigled into signing some sort of contract for 40 Boeing aircraft. Yup, 40. The deal it seems is envisaged at being around $6 billion. That’s $150 million a pop – and an awful […]

Obviously we don’t yet know what caused the BA 777 accident at Heathrow, but that’s not stopping some passengers talking about sueing. More interestingly, and encouragingly, some are going on the record declaring that they won’t sue. It’s been a long while since there was a major air accident in the UK and I think […]